Channel Nine's Footy Classified recently pinned its hopes on the opinions of former Victorian premier and Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett (left).

ONCE the joy of football, in its various forms, was to watch the game at the weekend, then spend several days talking about it. Now, instead, you go to the game then spend the next week watching former experts, journalists and - in the case of one show - even retired politicians talking about it.

If you thought it was impossible for the various free-to-air networks and Fox Sports to squeeze any more panel-based gabfests into their schedules, you were badly mistaken. As the AFL and NRL seasons draw closer, the breadth and - notionally - depth of television analysis is being taken to a new level.

The Olympics set the agenda for the manner in which pay and free-to-air networks will bombard the screen with analysis, prognostication and ''footbotainment'' shows this year. With multiple stations and endless hours to fill, Fox Sports was able to provide a blanket coverage of London 2012 that appealed to the hardcore.

Patently, the free-to-air networks don't have the scope to match Fox Sports. So, for them, it must be a case of never mind the width, feel the quality.

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Channel Seven has gradually improved the coverage around its marquee Friday night game. Bruce McAvaney has been deployed to participate in a number of entertaining ''inside the locker-room'' specials shown at half-time. Good use of a commentator whose journalistic skills have been, in latter years, sometimes overwhelmed by his enthusiastic calling.

Now, Seven is working to boost its Saturday night game, which is either blessed or encumbered by the industrial-sized personality of commentator Brian Taylor - depending on your tastes. The network has hired former Herald Sun reporter Mark Stevens and will use Fairfax Media's Samantha Lane in an attempt to bring a more journalistic approach.

The hope is not only to add to the quality of the pre and mid-game analysis, but to get the best out of popular and knowledgable experts such as Cameron Ling and Matthew Richardson. As most of the radio networks covering the game have come to understand, the more critical and investigative journalists are often able to draw greater insight from the former players and coaches than the blokey insiders and professional announcers.

On Fox Sports, the most noticeable change will be the manner in which it is attempting to replicate its successful AFL programming with NRL-based equivalents. The network has been heavily promoting a four-pronged attack that includes Monday's chatty Matty Johns Show, the revamped Back Page Live on Tuesday, the AFL carbon-copy NRL 360 on Wednesday and the techno-charged preview Sterlo on Thursday.

Fox is clearly focused on giving NRL the same level of intensive coverage provided by its AFL line-up, which again includes On the Couch and AFL 360. Earnest dissection of the game's minutiae, which can both enlighten and have you voluntarily surrendering the remote control for fear of suffering paralysis by analysis.

Fox Sport's increased NRL content reflects the much higher price paid by Foxtel for the NRL rights. For its part in the new $1 billion rights-holding agreement (with Channel Nine), Foxtel needs to do everything possible to boost ratings for weekend games - or, more significantly, boost subscriptions. Clearly, yet more talk shows are seen as the best way to attract eyeballs.

That Nine's NRL stalwart Peter Sterling will appear on Fox Sports the same night as the iconic NRL Footy Show has raised some eyebrows. Even Sterlo - a highly technical preview of the weekend's games - is to air at 7.30pm, an hour before the Footy Show.

That both the Footy Show in Melbourne and Sydney will start at 8.30pm this year is just one of the free-to-air attempts to inject yet more football coverage into prime time. Cynically, it seems also a blatant attempt to intrude upon the timeslot of Channel Ten's popular Before the Game.

Meanwhile, Nine's recent use of former Victorian premier and Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett on the AFL program Footy Classified gives some idea of the extremes to which the panel shows will go to gain some edge - in substance and promotion. And the mouths they are willing to engage.